


and your face comes to mind (at the worst moments)

by aiineslin



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 21:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiineslin/pseuds/aiineslin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The memories were enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and your face comes to mind (at the worst moments)

1\. It’s never a very good idea to fall for someone who worked in the world’s most dangerous profession. 

2\. Tendo never had good ideas.

3\. Yancy had messy hair. Tendo kept it neat with the small kit of scissors and combs he had assembled carefully over the years, and he was – apparently – the first person to introduce the concept of hair gel and styling to the man. To his credit, Yancy had been a quick learner – and the once indistinguishable twin figures of Becket and Becket from the back became just a bit easier to tell apart. 

4\. “I’ve been thinking,” said Raleigh one day, sprawled against a pillar and mowing steadily through a ham sandwich. They were sitting in front of the half-formed skeleton of a Jaegar. Sparks flew, and machines whirred and below them, the organised mess of technicians, scientists and engineers flowed and parted. It was an unusual break in the middle of a busy day. Yancy was nowhere to be found; he had demurred from joining them with their sandwiches and mild coffee – he had an appointment with the on-site doctor, he said. 

“You can think?” was Tendo’s mild rejoinder. 

“Cruel, Mr. Choi, cruel! Is that what my brother’s been teaching you?” 

Tendo paused mid-sip.

Raleigh’s eyes were fixed on the Jaegar. “It’s a bit hard to get a reservation for Glen’s around this time, isn’t it?”

Tendo shrugged. It was nearing Valentine’s, and amusingly enough – people were still overwhelming restaurants with reservations. “We all need a little love,” Newton had said , his eyes gleaming alarmingly. 

“So I took the initiative to make a reservation for a place for two on the thirteenth. That’s the only time I could get. Using my clout as a Ranger-in-training too, mind you.” Raleigh still wasn’t looking at him. “And Mr. Choi, you might want to stay away from your room for a few more hours, Yancy’s been getting up to something involving flowers and chocolate.”

 

5\. He hadn’t touched a book since he dropped out from high school two years before his graduation, and studying proved to be no easier even after so many years. His tiny bunk was flooded with thin paper filled with cramped handwriting and dog-eared textbooks bore the war wounds of purple and green highlighters with great pride.

Yancy helped him on occasions. Most times he didn’t. Or more accurately, Tendo didn’t let him.

“You’re being silly,” said Yancy one night. It was two weeks before the mid-year examinations which commanded a weightage of 25%. There was a half-emptied can of Coke, three unwashed mugs with brown coffee stains adhering to their bottom and two unopened cans of Red Bull. His roomie, Hao Jun, had long since went to bed in someone else’s room three hours ago at 11pm. “You’re fuckin’ insane, man,” the plump man had muttered, and gave Tendo a clap on his back.

“Excuse you?” There were bags under Tendo’s eyes and a permanent line seemed to have furrowed its way between his brows.

“Tendo, just let me help you, look, we can go over this together -”

“No, I can do this by myself. Yancy, Yancy – what the fuck are you doing in here, anyways? Go back to your room, you’re fucking distracting.”

“I’ve finished my revision –”

“You’re done?”

“Yeah.”

Tendo doesn’t say anything, just picked up his books and exited the room with a can of Red Bull and a pile of revision notes. There was a small dark corner near the labs where he could sit in peace without golden-boy, all-star ace Yancy to disturb him. 

 

6\. Yancy could be very stupid sometimes, Tendo reflected. No, scratch that, most times. But as he watched the other man towel himself down with the blue and white striped piece of fluff Tendo had gifted him as a birthday present, he thought – lucky his face more than made up for his brain.

Perhaps he felt the heavy stare on him, for Yancy looked up quizzically. Droplets of water clung to the spikes of his blonde hair, and there were fresh bruises on his upper torso. A new scar, Tendo noted with mild fretfulness, where there had not been one two weeks back. 

“C’mere,” said Tendo, and he rose to his feet, strolling languidly towards the taller man with his hands tucked in his pockets. A smile lit up his face, and he reached up to tangle calloused fingers in the other’s wet hair. “Let’s traumatise your little brother.”

Yancy laughed.

7\. “Tendo!”

Oh, fuck.

Raleigh was determined not to let him escape this time round, and Tendo was soon hauled bodily away from the other technicians, yelping a string of filthy Cantonese and Spanish slurs (Truth to be told, he could speak some Cantonese fluently enough. He just doubted Yeye would have been impressed by the words he knew.) .

“Make up with him!”

No mistaking who _him_ was.

“It’s got nothing to do with you –”

“Damn right it’s got something to do with me when that fucking argument is playing over and over in his head every time we drift!”

(Every time might be a bit of an overstatement, but there had certainly been a rather high number of times when Tendo’s twisted face and Yancy’s calm rage rolled around the Drift in a blur of jarring images and garbled voices, drowning out past and not-so-past memories with waves upon waves of emotion.)

Yancy was sitting beside one of the rookie engineers in the mess hall, and was halfway through a meal. One look at Raleigh’s frantic gestures and Tendo’s mulish expression, and he was standing up, pushing his abandoned meal to the side.

“Don’t fuck this up,” hissed Raleigh into Yancy’s ear. “Both of you are dumbshit stubborn fucks, but I’m telling you, make up or I’ll piss on your bunk. Enough is enough. I’ve seen him moping around like a soggy towel and _you_ , brother dear, are making drifts really, really uncomfortable.”

Yancy didn’t say anything, just elbowed past Raleigh roughly to stomp towards Tendo, who had straightened himself and was rubbing his neck with a scowl. They exit from the mess hall, each walking an arm’s length apart from each other. 

That night was the first night in three weeks that Yancy did not return to the room that he and Raleigh shared.

8\. They settle into an easy sort of complacency.

Occasionally, things were livened up when Tendo makes the quiet observation _I like the look of that leather collar_. (Very enjoyable. Raleigh didn’t meet their eyes for a week.), Yancy says _Hansen has nice eyes, doesn’t he?_ (Raleigh went out of his way to avoid Herc Hansen for another week.) and more often than not, _I saw this on the Internet_.

Yancy makes coffee the exacting way Tendo likes, and Tendo massages all the kinks out of Yancy’s back with the right amount of strength.

They watch sunsets occasionally, huddled together on the roof. Once, Yancy brings Tendo into the cockpit of Gipsy Danger. Raleigh says something about hygiene and _I’m not going to be sitting in the right side anymore, fuck no_ the next time he and Yancy sinks into the Drift.

9\. This isn’t happening. 

Tendo is hyper-aware, he feels the gaze of the other controllers and technicians in the room flicker to him, resting lightly on his stiff back before dancing away again. He is aware of Pentecost’s voice telling him to track Gipsy Danger. He is aware of Herc Hansen moving away from the room to shout and harangue at the medicals, telling them to be prepared. 

He needs a cup of coffee, and he reaches out to the mug of steaming hot liquid beside him and knocks it down in three gulps, heedless of the burn. 

10\. Raleigh leaves the Shatterdome without saying goodbye.

Tendo does not fault him for that. 

There is a photobook left on his bed, and he does not look at it, never opens it until nearly six years later.

He takes it up to the roof forty minutes before the sun sets, and flips through it slowly with a blanket thrown carelessly over crossed legs and a cup of hot coffee and bagels beside him.

(He makes a toast then, raising his mug to the darkening night sky with her pale stars and low-hanging clouds.)


End file.
